e finds himself; his
preserving a truly magnanimous spirit in the very face of an
unwarranted and violent opposition, foretell his future history. He is
contributing his part toward the industrial development of the South
and the religious elevation of the nation. Many of his redeeming
qualities are often regarded as evidences of puerility and barbarism.

Character cannot be built in a day, neither in an individual nor in a
race, but the Negro is old enough now to be an American citizen. He
has reached the years of maturity; his character is formed, and what
is good for the most advanced citizen is good for him. He demands
equal and exact justice; he will content himself with nothing less.
There are divine purposes in each life, in each race and nation. How
well these purposes are subserved is left with the individual, the
race or the nation.

Afflictions are a wholesome discipline, and the people who would
survive the wreck of nations must fight their way up under the
inexorable law of God, through trials, through tribulations, through
persecution and through blood. I do not wish in any way to condemn the
agitation of the hour in the name of justice, and civil political
liberty, but rather to urge it in a reasonable way. Agitation, says
Wendell Phillips, is the method that puts the school by the side of
the ballot box. Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace and
secures progress. Every step she gains is gained forever. Muskets are
the weapons of animals. "Agitation is the atmosphere of brains." Sir
Robert Peel defines it as the marshaling of the conscience of a nation
to mold its law. Injustice cannot stand before exposure and argument
and the force of public opinion. No sharper weapon of defense will be
required against the wrongs which afflict the South." No race can rise
higher than its ideal. To teach the Negro that the evils of his
environments will crush him forever, that a servant is and must be
servile in disposition and in general habit of mind; that hair and
skin and the shape of the head stamp him an inferior, is a doctrine of
creation without God in it.

No, let him know and feel that he is a man with the great
ever-expanding capacity of a man, and that a step beyond him is Deity.
Let him see himself mirrored in Hamlet's sublime outbursts of
admiration: "What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in reform, how express and admirable; in action
how like an angel in